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Whenever something negative or terrible happens "in the name of Islam", you just brush it off as "that is not Islam" or "that is anti-Islam". It's good if you feel that that should not be Islam, but the fact of the matter is that these things happen by the hands of people who consider themselves Muslims and who believe that what they do is what they have to do to be good Muslims. Is this not true? Please answer this question: Does it happen that women are forced to wear the veil/the burkha even though they would not if they really had a free choice? x - yes x - no Thanks.
Good point. That answer doesn't really address the issue. I bet most people don't have a problem with the religion of Islam, it's how some people choose to practice it- through violence, hatred, and intolerance.
No, really dude, it's literally anti-Islam. There are literally verses in the Quran. There are even passages in the Hadith (which I don't believe in) banning it. It's Arab. It happens with Christians at times in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, etc. It just happens less often because there are far more Muslims. It's not me. It's not specific to some. It's not a Muslim practice. It's a practice that existed pre-islam and was banned, rather unsuccessfully it seems, by Islam. But literally... it is as Islamic as a Yamaka. As for your second question - sure it happens that they are forced. Are you implying that this is your basis for the law? People kill themselves with kitchen knives. Should we ban the production of kitchen knives? If you were talking about an Arab country, the statistic would be valid. Your argument is valid only under certain conditions. For example, in Saudi Arabia, you need a man's persmission to leave the country so there is no chance of you getting away from doing it. If you get to the border, they will send you back. In France, you can marry who you want as an adult. You can live how you want. Murderers are arrested and put on trial. You can send your husband to jail for laying a finger on you. The structure is robust enough such that any woman complaining that she is 'forced' does not illicit sympathy from me. She's in a free country and she chooses who she wants to marry. If things get rowdy, you go to the police station and they protect you - as opposed to Saudi where you would be told to go home and stop being a whiny tramp. Force only comes into the equation if there is a social structure to support it. In France, there is no such structure and that's almost certainly why these people have moved to France. The government is insisting that these women are oppressed. How does one integrate into society when the president is telling everyone she's a mindless slave? What if your President came out and called Muslims idiots for believing in Islam? Look, as I said before, I am COMPLETELY against the niqab, probably for the very same reasons France has alleged. But to ban someone from wearing it is an unprecedented intrusion into freedom. It does not even have the benefits of a patriot act which directly protects US citizens. It is apparently to protect those specific women, who are saying that they don't need any protection. The last thing a Muslim needs is to set up a life in another country after running away from oppression to face oppression in the exact opposite way. Imagine the mind-fuc of being forced to wear it in Saudi Arabia and then being forced not to wear it in France, all the while you want to keep your religion personal and make the decision without being dictated by your government or husband or father or whatever? It is ridiculous and frankly ATW, I really think you should reconsider your stance on the matter. If France wants to get rid of extremists, this is the worst solution. Even by your rationale, they are forced into it, so they are not the extremists. Why punish them for someone else's actions? The women who wear niqab are responsible for themselves in this regard. Do you really think they will stop wearing it in public? I know them. They will simply stay home. Is that how you achieve integration? No. France knows that. The goal is to force them to leave if they're not willing to take it off. It's really a travesty against freedom. Never in my life have I seen a country enforce a law forcing people to conform to their own definition of freedom. Consider it in this context: Prostitution (paying for it) is legal in France. France doesn't attempt to enforce its definition of freedom on prostitutes, knowing full well that a chunk of them are forced into it. France doesn't interfere, despite knowing that prostitution leads to a heightened risk of contracting sexual diseases. France doesn't ever say that prostitution is a symbol of female oppression - which is most likely true. Women have historically been forced into prostitution frequently. Instead, France tries to reinvent prostitution and control the bad elements around it. Testing for diseases. Legalization. Multiple forms of protection and parading around the "a woman is free to do what she wants with her body." Banning procurement, solicitation, basically any influence or force which pushes a person to become a buyer/seller. "It considers that making it illegal to offer sexual services in return for goods or services in the context of one's private life is a violation of individual liberty." But covering your face for what you believe to be God is ban-worthy? The comparison is valid on so many levels: - Lots of prostitutes in France are still forced into it. - They still solicit. - It's fairly common for prostitution to lead to a life of drugs, alcoholism, etc. But still, it is not banned. How sad that covering your face by choice is worse than offering sexual services by choice. How incredibly sad.
I guess the problem is that Islam is confusing in it's message and is being interpetted in many different ways by many different people. What Mathloom says is Islam does not jive with what the Ayatollah says is Islam. Same thing happens in Christianity.....all one big religious mess. Got to engage people in a genuine form to actual reach consensus. DD
Yeah, Christianity is very clear and not confusing and is interpreted the same! Always has been, always will be!
Yeah, well, the Ayatollahs are special cases. But yeah, generally, I believe Islam is a set of personal rules/laws and the problem you're talking about is a result of trying to apply it as a law for a group - be it a Muslim group or, in the case of extremists, the whole world. Clearly, the larger the group of people you try to govern by these rules, the more corrupt the message becomes. That much is obvious.
Mathloom - lots of words, but the reality is: Even you yourself write that the women are forced to wear them in Arab countries. Then you go on to write that people in France are free to do whatever they want. That is not true - if these same people come to France from an Arab country, they will bring the same habits with them: The men can force the women to wear them. France can either close its eyes to this travesty, or prevent the men from forcing their women to wear them BY LAW. If France does nothing, basically what will happen is that these men can still oppress their women, even though France in theory is a free country. So basically your whole argument that the prohibition of veil and burkha is a restriction of freedom is not true, even by your own admission that in Arab countries, men can oppress their women that way. If you are honest to yourself, they will not stop acting like that just because they are in a different country now. Rather than adopting the freedoms of said country, they will continue this tradition of oppression in that country. Therefore, that law is not designed to take freedom away, but to actually GIVE these women more freedom by forcing their men to no longer be able to force them to wear that crap. Now, you are making the argument that what will happen is that the men will just lock their wives up at home. That is not France's fault - that is the fault of these sicko oppressive "wrong interpretation of Islam" ((c) Mathloom) fanatics.
ATW, I truly refuse to believe this is a serious post. If you want to end the travesty, don't start with a new travesty.
My extremist views? LOL, maybe from wherever you stand. Nothing about me is extremist. Talking about extremism... http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/20/iftikhar.draw.mohammad.day/ Pakistan should ban extremism, not Facebook (CNN) -- For a country that has produced five military dictators in 60 years, mourned the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and struggles continually against its own militant extremists who have killed thousands in their own nation, Pakistan has absolutely picked the wrong fight by banning Facebook and YouTube because of an idiotic virtual campaign called "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." According to a story on CNN.com, Pakistan blocked access to YouTube -- a day after it shut down the social networking site Facebook -- after an online group called on people to draw the Prophet Mohammed. In response, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered its operators to shut down YouTube "in view of growing sacrilegious content on it." Instead of knee-jerk political reactions and impassioned threats of violence, as proud millennial Muslims we should reflect and ponder how our Prophet Mohammed would have responded to such silly faux controversies. In a recent piece I wrote for The Washington Post, I highlighted a well-known Islamic parable that tells the story of the Prophet Mohammed and his interactions with an unruly female neighbor, who would curse him violently and then dump garbage on him from her top window each time he walked by her house. One day, the prophet noticed that the woman was not there. In the spirit of true kindness, he went out of his way to inquire about her well-being. He then went on to visit his unfriendly neighbor at her bedside when he found that she had fallen seriously ill. This genteel act of prophetic kindness toward unfriendly or overtly hostile neighbors is the Muslim "Ubuntu" standard that we should all aspire to, not irrational threats of violence aimed at the silliness of some sophomoric cartoons aimed at inciting a provocative response around the world. If we ask ourselves the simple question "What would Mohammed do?" about this, the even simpler answer would be two words: "Absolutely nothing." Translated accurately from its native Urdu language, the word Pakistan means "land of the pure." Sadly, there has been nothing pure about the downward sociopolitical spiral of this nuclear-armed, Third World fledgling democracy of 172 million people over the last several years. "In Pakistan, the rule of law does not protect the people. ... When people do not feel protected, they put their faith into God's hands. ... And this is exploited, frankly, by some of the rhetoric and extremist ideology of the militants," former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin told me in a March 2009 interview. Instead of educating and empowering the women and children of Pakistan, the "extremists moved in, slit throats of political officials, murdered policemen in their stations, slaughtered the military, kidnapped wealthy people, blew up schools because little girls went there. ... They have been terrorizing the region," Chamberlin said. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley once said: "Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror, and in some sense, a battleground of the war on terror." Instead of conjuring up stupid controversies like the recent bans of Facebook and YouTube because of some silly drawings, the 172 million citizens of Pakistan should focus their political attention and economic resources on educating their women, improving their rule of law system and truly understanding the repercussions that come with ominously naming your country the "land of the pure."
It’s a good thing Facebook has been banned Maybe it’s a good thing that Facebook has been banned. It might even be a positive development because the prohibition means that we may now see a reduced number of court cases on matters as inconsequential as corruption, rape and murder, and instead directions for bans on YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia. Might I suggest that we also ban pencils and drawing. Too long have our parents lamented our generation’s lack of passion and drive. Now, with this simple ban, the most apathetic mouse-clicking teenager of yesterday has been transformed into a politically active, enraged seeker of revolution. If nothing else, it certainly freed up my day. Maybe we can all take this enforced break from spreading our narcissism into the ether with status updates and instead enjoy some silent introspection. Maybe we won’t waste our time mindlessly staring at videos of kittens falling over and instead learn something new like dancing the salsa, building model warships or playing the sitar. There is a risk of course. Maybe I will, instead, succumb to the same relief-from-boredom techniques used by the rest of Pakistan that never used the internet and go on to sire 13 children while burning a tire. To the court’s credit though, the ban must be working. I definitely will not see any offensive website today compared to when Facebook was not blocked. Unfortunately, with the freed up bandwidth, I am also more likely to start downloading mass amounts of p*rnography since torrent speeds are fantastic right now. The real unsung victim of this Facebook ban though, is poor old Musharraf. Since his exile he has been sitting with a team of analysts and strategists, carefully studying every aspect of the Obama campaign. “Social networking” one of them cried out, “that’s the key!” “What the hell is social networking,” was Musharraf’s response. The following year was spent teaching him how to set up a fan-page, how to upload video clips and how to set your privacy settings so the whole world can’t see the pictures of you in a swimming pool — known as “pulling a Taseer”. Finally, after much training he was set to begin twofinger typing his call to revolution. And then Facebook got banned. Where will he find followers from now? What will this mean for his political career? And more importantly, does he know about the ban or does he think all of Pakistan is avoiding him on-line. YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook are planning on a response but they should take the time out to be proud of themselves. On the internet, being banned by Pakistan puts you in good company. We only ban the best. YouTube was banned last year and Blogspot was banned the year before that. Oddly, blasphemy still exists despite these bans. Maybe that’s something I can think about in my new-found free time. http://tribune.com.pk/story/14811/it’s-a-good-thing-facebook-has-been-banned/
I think Mathloom wishes for you to comment on his remarks concerning "France reinvent[ing] prostitution and control[ling] the bad elements around it." I agree with him and with you, to a lesser extent. Although noble in official intention (to 'free' oppressed women), France is going about this in the wrong way. Rather than outright banning a practice which itself becomes a sort of oppression, it should indirectly try to limit the ability of those patriarchal immigrant husbands who would lock their wives up at home were they to not cover themselves up. Whether this is through tougher immigration laws/screening which ensure the incoming women are educated in secular freedoms (are 'strong-willed', 'independent') so they won't fall prey to sexist men's beliefs, passing tax legislation that penalizes households where only the husband works (and has the ability to lock up his wife at home where she has little interaction with other people), I don't know but I'm sure people can come up with innovative indirect ways to curb this problem. I think this is like smoking (I know it's a bad comparison so don't bother with nitpicking it too much). Everyone knows it's bad and banning it outright would be beneficial for the population in the long run. But it's not up to me or other people to tell how others wish to kill themselves with cancer sticks. I have the same belief regarding euthanasia. One should talk/help a suicidal person (or a terminally ill patient in pain), but ultimately taking their life is their decision. If you've read Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, you'll get a sense of the idea of choice that I'm talking about.
Extremists? Do these students look like extremists? Seems to me like a bunch of ordinary Muslims that doesn't know the meaning of a peaceful demonstration. Islam is a religion of peace my ass.
Regarding this topic, there is nothing I can do to back the Muslim reactions in foreign countries at these idiotic protests. It's simple, I don't get why people don't understand: Drawing images of the Prophet Muhammed is forbidden for MUSLIMS TO DRAW. Who gives a damn if other people draw him. They can do whatever they want, they aren't Muslim. That's like protesting because non-Muslims eat pork because it's forbidden in Islam. Flat out absurd. These rules don't apply to non-Muslims. The only reaction this "Draw Muhammed Day" gets out of me and most other sensible Muslims is rolling our eyes and thats it.
